Saturday, September 27, 2014

Calling all ID Advocates: Employment Awaits

One of the points of my long paper with Elsberry was that intelligent design (ID) advocates talk a big game, but don't actually accomplish anything.

They claim their methods are revolutionary. They claim that all sorts of fields, like archeology and forensic science, use "pre-theoretic" versions of their "design detection" methodology. Yet when it comes to actually applying their methods where they would potentially be useful, what happens?

Crickets chirping...

In fact, in 2003 we published a little paper, "Eight challenges for intelligent design advocates", where we asked ID advocates to prove their silly ideas useful in practice.

Needless to say, not a single ID advocate has come forward with an answer to any of our challenges.

Well, here's another. Recently archaeologists discovered what may be evidence of the earliest sign of humans in what is now Canada.

As the article says, researchers are not completely sure yet. They may have found a stone weir constructed to catch fish, or they may have found a natural, non-human-constructed formation: "A geologist will now study the images to ensure the rocks are not a natural formation..."

Needless to say, there is no sign these researchers are basing their decision on the research oeuvre of William Dembski to decide the question.

But why not? After all, detecting design is what ID advocates say they're really, really good at. Better than all those stupid "materialist" scientists.

So have at it, ID advocates! Volunteer your massive expertise here. Do your investigations. Create your specifications, prove they're independent, tell us what the "rejection region" is, and so forth. Write a paper with your decision about these possible stone weirs. Publish it in the peer-reviewed literature --- you know, a real journal like Science or Nature, not the creationist circle-jerk that is Bio-Complexity. (Try not to be fooled the way Dembski was about the so-called "bible codes".)

What are they waiting for? They must be busy preparing a response to the request for proposals I posted on Talk.Origins in 2007. Normally I'd say "wait your turn," but you did ask them first. Though my request was much easier, limited to human origins, and just the basic "what happened when" for which they all but admitted that mainstream science is correct and the various literal interpretations of Genesis are wrong. So they have nothing to lose by providing a "quick" answer. Nothing that is, except the "big tent" charade.

Gallien falsely implies that there are no models nor testable hypotheses for evolution, where obviously there is a vast literature on paleontology, speciation, genomic comparisons, etc. showing the testing of predictions resulting from detailed models of evolution.

Moreover it's a non sequitur. Intelligent Design has to stand on its own, make testable predictions of its own, and prove that it is useful in real science, rather than just endlessly demanding a change to the definition of science so that Intelligent Design wins by default, by putting "God of the Gaps" logically prior to the scientific method.

I learned something interesting I didn't know. That Dembski endorsed the Bible Code nonsense. But that was long time ago, when Dembski was "young and foolish". I wonder... has he revised his position on the Bible Code now?

Gallien falsely implies that there are no models nor testable hypotheses for evolution, where obviously there is a vast literature on paleontology, speciation, genomic comparisons, etc. showing the testing of predictions resulting from detailed models of evolution.